Emmanuel Baptist Church is an Elizabethtown Church meeting the needs of our church, our community, our state, our nation, and the world as we love God, link with others, learn to follow, live on mission.

Chorale Encore Easter Performance

Today we gave an encore Easter performance of "Jesus Messiah" at the ManorCare nursing home in Elizabethtown. Many thanks to all members of the EBC Chorale for their work, dedication, and passion for praising our Lord this Easter!

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Many thanks to all members of the Emmanuel Baptist Church (EBC) Chorale for your dedication, hard work, enthusiasm, and skill as you learned and presented "Jesus, Messiah" today. We also thank all who came, supported, and prayed for this Easter musical performance.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Watching the weather for Sunday. Current forecast is looking to be in the mid to high 30's, with chance of light snow or rain. If like weather looks probable, we will postpone to our Sunday, April 3rd "rain" date.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

HOUSTON (BP) -- A conference and museum exhibit at Houston Baptist University helped mark the 500th anniversary of a Greek New Testament edition the exhibit's curator said "spurred the Reformation" and "continues to be important" for biblical studies.

On March 1, 1516, a Dutch priest named Desiderius Erasmus published the Greek New Testament's first ever "critical edition" -- a version that drew from all available Greek manuscripts to compile a text with wording as close as possible to that of the original inspired authors. That work, which went through four revisions, was the first published Greek text available to the public. It is credited with changing Bible translation, preaching and even the course of church history.

HBU commemorated the anniversary with a Feb. 25-27 conference and an exhibit in its Dunham Bible Museum scheduled to run through Dec. 16 titled "Renaissance of the Bible: 500th Anniversary of Erasmus' Greek Text, the Foundation for Reformation."

"We have the first three editions of Erasmus' Greek text in our collection, as well as Erasmus' 'Annotations' and 'Paraphrases' in English, so it was natural for us to have a special exhibit for this 500th anniversary," Dunham Museum director Diana Severance told Baptist Press. "As I began studying and putting together our exhibit, I gained new appreciation for Erasmus' foundational importance to the Reformation.

"Erasmus saw the corruption in the church of his day and wanted to go back to the original source of the Christian faith, the Bible," Severance said in written comments. "He believed the Bible should be for everyone, not just for the educated elite, and should be translated into the common vernacular of the people."

'Textus Receptus'

Erasmus was born in 1466 in Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands today. After both his parents died of the plague, Erasmus was raised by monks in a monastery, where he fostered a love for books. Eventually, he left the monastery to study at the University of Paris and became a leading scholar of the 16th-century "humanist" movement, which studied ancient Greek and Latin works.

He experienced what church historian Timothy George called a "turning point" in 1504 when he discovered a century-old manuscript by Lorenzo Valla with notes about Paul's Epistles based on various Greek manuscripts. Inspired by Valla, Erasmus decided to publish a critical edition of the Greek New Testament.

"That had never been done before," said George, a keynote speaker at HBU's conference and dean of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School. Erasmus "collected manuscripts from all the places he could go -- universities and monasteries that kept these manuscripts -- brought them together, and began to collate them. And in 1516, a publisher in the city of Basel, Switzerland, named Froben published the first-ever critical edition of the New Testament, which Erasmus had edited."

Not even Erasmus realized the significance of his accomplishment, George told Baptist Press. His work became the basis for Martin Luther's German translation of the New Testament, William Tyndale's English translation and Hungarian and Spanish translations.

A century later, Erasmus' work was dubbed the "textus receptus" (Latin for "received text") and became the basis for the King James Version.

In the late 1520s, Erasmus proposed a "new" way of pronouncing Greek he believed to be consistent with classical Greek pronunciation. Known as "Erasmian" pronunciation, his scheme remained the standard method used in academic settings to pronounce biblical Greek for nearly 500 years until some scholars challenged it recently, George said.

'The egg Luther hatched'

In Germany, Luther studied the first edition of Erasmus' Greek New Testament as he formulated his "95 Theses," the document widely credited with launching the Protestant Reformation in 1517 by articulating a series of grievances against the Roman Catholic Church. The first three theses drew on Erasmus' translation of the Greek word metanoeite, in Matthew 3:2 and elsewhere, as "repent" rather than the traditional Catholic rendering of "do penance," which supported the sacramental system.

Erasmus, George said, "uncovered" that the Greek word referenced "a change of heart, a conversion of life" and "not just an act you do, a good work you perform."

"Luther got that, and he used Erasmus' Greek New Testament to give a whole different understanding of what repentance and penance was about," George said. "And that's what triggered the Reformation."

Though Erasmus never left the Roman Catholic Church, it has been said since of the Reformation for five centuries, "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched."

A change in preaching

Rick Melick, distinguished professor of New Testament at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, told BP it is "unclear how many manuscripts [Erasmus] used in his work," but most originated in approximately the 10th century -- much later than the third- and fourth-century manuscripts that have since been discovered and are used by contemporary scholars.

"Now most scholars reject the Erasmus text as the best text," Melick said in written comments, "and therefore the translations based on it are also considered less than the best," though they are quite accurate.

Still, Erasmus' work "marked a significant turning point in history," Melick said, and "changed the way serious pastors approach preaching."

When today's preachers reference Greek words and language-study resources, they are following a tradition instituted in part by Erasmus.

Thanks to Erasmus and his successors who produced other critical New Testament editions, "pastors can read the Greek texts to verify the content of the New Testament," Melick said. "Critical editions enable them to make choices they believe are correct in places where there are variants. Pastors should work from the Greek text and in seminary are taught how to use it.

"Second, there are an abundance of resources that help pastors, based on the critical texts," he continued. "These include word studies, theological dictionaries, commentaries, lexicons and translations. These significantly improve the content of preaching. Third, the critical text enables pastors to make their way through the multiplicity of translations in any language."

'I vehemently dissent'

Erasmus wasn't without flaws, George said, noting he "missed ... the total gravity of sin and the depth of our alienation from God and so, therefore, the necessity of a grace that reaches deeper and is much more transformative."

Yet "at his heart, I think he really wanted to follow Jesus Christ and encourage other people to live a Christian life," George said.

That included providing common people with access to the New Testament, which appeared in Latin translation alongside the Greek in his original edition.

"I vehemently dissent from those who would not have private persons read the Holy Scriptures nor have them translated into the vulgar tongues," Erasmus wrote in the preface to his 1516 edition. "... Would that they were translated into all languages so that not only Scotch and Irish, but Turks and Saracens [a medieval term for Arabs] might be able to read and know them."

The original story can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/46449/erasmus-greek-nt-changed-history-500-years-ago

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Discussion Questions: What characteristics of God did Moses mention when pleading for mercy? God could have displayed His power in judgment. Why do you think Moses asked for mercy? As the people's representative, Moses showed interest in what "the nations" would think if God destroyed the Israelites. How can the church show interest in seeing that the glory of God's forgiveness is known among the nations?Food for Thought:

How did the Lord respond to the Israelites' faithlessness? He was ready to destroy them, until Moses began to intercede for his people. God was going to send a devastating plague among the Israelites and restart the building process of His great nation. As the Lord, He held the right to do as He pleased to fulfill His perfect will. So Moses appealed not to the Israelites' goodness but to God's greatness. He lifted up the name of God and reminded God of His character.

Read Numbers 14:13-20.

Moses stood before God as the representative for his people. He pleaded with God to show mercy so that the name of the Lord would be more widely known. Certainly, any work that God does proves His power, but Moses prayed that God would use this circumstance of the Hebrews' rebellion to display His power in His ability to forgive sin -- once again. Moses asked for God's forgiveness.

Moses asked God to forgive "in keeping with the greatness of Your faithful love, just as You have forgiven them from Egypt until now" (v. 19). The forgiveness of our Heavenly Father is based on His love, not on our merit, penitent spirit or ability to straighten out our lives. When God immediately pardoned the sin of the Israelites, He mentioned nothing of their ability to keep covenant faithfulness. The good news given to us by God is that His forgiveness is based on His power, not on our abilities.

When Moses stood before God and begged for mercy upon the people, he gave us a picture of what was to come. The people needed an advocate. They had one in Moses. The problem, however, was that Moses died and is still dead! This was a temporary advocacy by a temporary leader in a temporary time. We need a permanent solution.

God's pardon finds its ultimate fulfillment not in the temporary circumstance of the Israelites standing on the edge of the promised land. Rather, we have found it in the journey Jesus made to the cross and the grave, and in rising from the dead. Only God in the flesh can be our perfect advocate.

Jesus lived as we do so as to sympathize with our weaknesses. Israel would spend 40 years in the wilderness, wandering around in faithlessness. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, but unlike Israel, He passed the test. As the perfect representative, He gave the sacrifice we should give so as to grant salvation by His grace and through our faith. He rose from the dead, a state we cannot overcome, to defeat sin, death, hell and the Enemy. And now Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede for you and me every moment of our existence.

Furthermore, because we have been fully represented before God by Jesus, we now are able to represent God before the people of the world who do not know Him. Today, our calling is not to conquer the nations but to take the Gospel to them. No matter if the obstacles make us feel like "grasshoppers," we trust that God's power is greater than our own and that He will give us all we need to accomplish His mission.

The Gospel Project
The Gospel Project is a Christ-centered curriculum that examines the grand narrative of Scripture and how the Gospel transforms the lives of those it touches. Through a three-year study plan, participants are immersed in the Gospel through stories, theological concepts, and calls to missions from Genesis to Revelation. Separate study plans for kids and students/adults ensure the proper focus and depth. The Gospel Project is designed to unify an entire church under a single Christ-centered curriculum. More information, free samples, and The Gospel Project blog can be found at gospelproject.com.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

A memorial service will be held for Edmund “Ed” Hobert Emery, on Saturday, January 30th at 2 PM at Emmanuel Baptist Church, 25 Beechwood Ln., Elizabethtown 17022 . Friends and family are invited for visitation from 1 PM until time of the service.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

December 18, 1950 ~ January 16, 2016 (age 65)

Edmund “Ed” Hobert Emery, 65, of Elizabethtown, passed away with family by his side on January 16, 2016 in Hospice and Community Care, Mt. Joy. He was born December 18, 1950 in Iowa City, IO to the late Benjamin G. Emery and Grace B. (Sampson) Emery Dulio.

Ed was employed at Lancaster County Communications as a dispatcher and retired from Elizabethtown College, where he worked in public safety and dispatching. He was a faithful member of Emmanuel Baptist Church, and took strength in his faith that God is always in control and promises to never fail. Ed enjoyed coaching his children’s sports teams when they were younger and volunteered for the Lancaster County Special Olympics and the local EMS and Fire Police. Ed was a member of the Civil War reenactment group, PA 1st Company 1st Battalion Veterans Reserve Corps earning the rank of Sergeant Major. He took great pride in his Cherokee Native American Heritage. Most importantly he was a humble man with a bold personality, whom everyone loved, and who loved his family very much.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, January 30th. at 2 PM at Emmanuel Baptist Church, 25 Beechwood Ln., Elizabethtown 17022 with Pastor Garret L. Rain officiating. Friends and family are invited for visitation from 1 PM until time of the service. Arrangements have been entrusted to Miller-Finkenbinder Funeral Home & Crematory, 130 N. Market St., Elizabethtown 17022.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in his honor Lancaster County Special Olympics, PO Box 7442, Lancaster 17604 or to Christ Home for Children, 3182 Lincoln Hwy. E., Paradise 17562.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Release Time Bible Classes Start: January 25, 2016

EBC is pleased to host release time Bible based classes for East High Elementary school students in Second and Third grades.

Bible2School is very simple. It’s simple Bible stories being shared with kids who would not otherwise hear those stories because they don’t attend church. In Bible2School we reveal God’s love and grace to many for the first time. Children are taught that God has a purpose and a plan for their lives so they can feel the joy that exists when God becomes part of their lives. His stories are told and children’s lives are changed.

Each year, on average 56% of kids in the Bible2School program have no church affiliation. Bible2School is the church that goes to the children.